Last Friday we said farewell to our STEP-UP intern, Gyasi Lymon. STEP-UP, a program managed by AchieveMpls, recruits, trains, and places youth in summer jobs with local employers. We were learned a lot from him, and taught him a few things about the blue ocean. His final day was celebrated with a summertime favorite, root beer floats. We look forward to staying in touch as he continues to learn and grow!

The Minneapolis, St.Paul Star Tribune recently showcased one of ten ProjectREV contest winners, who are receiving a marketing makeover courtesy of Deluxe Corporation. Marketing continues to be an essential element in a business’s success, even in a tough economy.

It’s important. But why? We recently attended MIMA’s July discussion panel. The topic: Integrated Communications. A wide variety of topics were discussed in the early morning hour, but there was a key takeaway; agencies must adapt to changing times, where strategy is king. Jumping from product straight to tactics will no longer give you successful results. Clients won’t support (or give dollars to) crazy, creative tactics if they aren’t able to see the strategy behind the tactics.

Every project has a story. This is Project REV’s story.

Deluxe Corp. held a competition to award a select group of small business owners across the country with a yearlong marketing makeover. Nine finalists were chosen, and now Deluxe Corp. is helping them with their marketing efforts.

But there are more winners in this story.

 This dreary Friday brings backmemories of a great Friday past, last Friday to be exact. We attended Social Media Breakfast hosted by Deluxe Corp. and it was a blast. The sun was shining bright, and so were the smiles. It was fun to see Twitter avatars materialize in front of our eyes, chat with old friends, and also make a few new ones. The topic of last week’s gathering was how small businesses are using social media.

Although the world cup has officially wrapped up, we still have soccer fever here at Azul 7. Our office soccer expert, Paul Toman, is a very proud father, as one of his sons is off in a far away land (Europe) participating in a couple of pretty large international youth soccer tournaments. Playing on an international stage, is no easy task, because according to Paul, each continent, and sometimes each individual country has it's own style of play, making a physically demanding game even more difficult.

The World Cup 2010 is drawing to a suspenseful end! If you have been following the most popular sporting event in the world, you will be one of over a billion people watching the final between one of the favorites to win the entire tournament, Spain, and an underdog, Netherlands.

Last week we attended "Being Digital": Five key tactics for modernizing your organization and ideas, held by MNAMA, and hosted by Fallon. Aki Spicer, Director of Digital Strategy at Fallon, presented his digital media insights, supplemented by some pretty cool examples of Fallon’s recent work.